H E A R__I T "Do Ya" -- Matthew Sweet
- - - - - - - - T A B L E__T A L K Is there a place today for serious jazz? Riff in Table Talk's Music department. - - - - - - - - R E C E N T L Y Rolling Stones
Green Day
Apples in Stereo
Mike Watt
Helium
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V O W E L L
Sound Salvation
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F E A T U R E
Almost Heaven:
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LIVE FROM 6A: . . . . Great Musical Performances from "Late Night with Conan O'Brien" . . . . [ Mercury ] LIVE ON LETTERMAN:
BY JOYCE MILLMAN | Fifteen years ago, when David Letterman first went on the air at NBC, his "Late Night" was to Johnny Carson's venerable "Tonight Show" what punk was to big-band music -- a clean pop-cultural break along generational lines. No such chasms mar today's late-night talk-show landscape. Sure, Letterman's "Late Night" successor, Conan O'Brien, is nearly 20 years younger than Letterman and Jay Leno, but they're all boomers. Unlike Carson, who resisted booking rock acts, all of these guys have more or less a rock sensibility. Dave and late-night ratings king Jay may prefer '70s and '80s AOR and new wave stars as musical guests, but both are shrewd enough to do what they have to do to draw younger viewers, hence, Dave welcoming Missy "Misdemeanor" Elliott and Jay grooving to Beck. And while O'Brien's "Late Night" bolstered its weak ratings by staking out turf as TV's showcase for college radio faves, Conan always seems particularly jazzed when he gets to interview long-in-the-tooth idols like Paul McCartney or Elvis Costello. Gone are the days when one late-night talk show so clearly dominated the scene that the host could exclude entire categories of musical guests on personal whim.
The problem with both compilations is the superfluousness of many of the tracks. On "Letterman," Stewart does his 5 millionth live performance of "Reason to Believe" and Aretha does her 10 millionth live version of "Think." On "Live from 6A," Cake, 311 and Edwyn Collins simply show up and sing "The Distance," "Down" and "A Girl Like You"; Costello does "All This Useless Beauty" accompanied by Steve Nieve, but it's not markedly different from the version on the duo's live CD set. Matthew Sweet steals the O'Brien disc simply because he doesn't do "Girlfriend" -- instead, he and his band offer a killer version of the old Move song "Do Ya," recorded during sound check. Ironically, for a show in which the musical guests are often crammed into the last five minutes, "Live on Letterman" is the more interesting collection. It also has more purely dazzling performances: Lou Reed's surprisingly vital and frisky "Sweet Jane"; R.E.M.'s "Crush with Eyeliner," even more reverb-heavy (and Velvety) than the original; Patti Smith doing an astonishing version of Bo Diddley's "Who Do You Love?" that's almost Biblical in its might and fervor; Costello and Burt Bacharach in the only TV performance of their masterpiece "God Give Me Strength"; Sinead O'Connor breaking into giggles as she tries to sing a duet of "Have I Told You Lately?" with an oblivious, scatting Van Morrison. I sure would have liked to have seen what Sinead found so funny, and
what caused her to audibly utter "whoops" near the end of the song. Which
brings up the big problem with both collections. You don't get a sense of
the peculiarities of live TV, where performers contend with cramped
physical space and rigid time allotments and have to hit the stage at full
throttle. This creates a seat-of-the-pants excitement that can paralyze
some performers but obviously energized Smith, Reed and DiFranco. Hearing
R.E.M.'s "Crush with Eyeliner" live is one thing, but what you don't know
from the track (unless you saw the show) was that Michael Stipe was acting
particularly queeny that night. And on "God Give Me Strength," while Costello and Bacharach sound wonderful backed by a full orchestra, you can't see the lost, startled look on Costello's face when he finished singing, as if he were waking up from a dream. Listening to both compilations, you get the nagging sense that something is missing, and it is: the pictures.
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WANDERLUST
Which is why the two new compilations of music from Letterman's current
CBS gig, "Late Show," and O'Brien's "Late Night" are pretty much
interchangeable. Yes, "Live from 6A: Great Musical Performances from 'Late
Night with Conan O'Brien'" is heavier on alternative stars like 311, Cake
and Björk, but the collection also features a sprinkling of rock veterans
(Costello, David Bowie) and a couple of wild-card cult faves (Ani DiFranco,
Jonathan Richman). And while "Live on Letterman: Music from 'The Late Show'" has longevity on its side (the average age of the performers here, which
include Van Morrison, Aretha Franklin, Lou Reed, Rod Stewart, Patti Smith,
Jerry Garcia and Al Green, is just too depressing to calculate), Dave also
welcomes some of those megastars the kids love, like the Dave Matthews
Band, Lenny Kravitz and Jewel.
See -- interchangeable.